Don’t expect to see Devin Bush put on a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey ever again. And that’s likely something both he and the team are okay with.
Bush, the former first-round pick who flashed as a rookie and then consistently failed to impress following a knee injury in 2020, was essentially benched the last two weeks, getting replaced by a rookie and a former undrafted player.
“Not health related, really game-specific related,” said Mike Tomlin Monday at his season-ending press conference. “The nature of play of those two teams we played down the stretch, specifically, it warranted us to do some things in terms of division of labor that minimized some of his opportunities to contribute.
To translate, against a pair of divisional opponents (Baltimore and Cleveland), which feature strong running games, Bush could not be trusted to make plays. He played only five defensive snaps in each of the final two games.
Meanwhile, the team turned to a rookie, Mark Robinson, who had played zero snaps until Week 15, and Robert Spillane, who played 100 percent of the team’s defensive snaps over the final four weeks of the year, to fill Bush’s void.
Bush has been, for lack of a better word, a bust. His unwillingness to play with physicality following his injury was beyond noticeable. He's played far too timid, and that doesn’t cut it in the NFL, particularly in a defense that prides itself on its physicality.
Tomlin did try to soften the move to bench Bush by saying, “we make those decisions week in and week out in a lot of areas. It’s just football and trying to engineer victory.”
But the organization clearly gave up on a player they once traded up to take in the first round.
Pittsburgh will still have to face Cleveland and Baltimore twice next year. They’ll also play teams that are built on strong run games like Tennessee, San Francisco, Indianapolis and others.
If Bush can’t be trusted to essentially play in half of the team’s games, it’s time to say goodbye. And he seems more than open to that.
During training camp, he was asked about his long-term future in Pittsburgh, after the team declined to pick up his fifth-year option. His response drew waves of criticism about his attitude.
“I mean, I’m still going to be in the NFL,” he said. “So we’ll see.”
Bush may be right. He may still be in the NFL next season. But it almost assuredly will not be with the Steelers.